SIFF 2014 Announces Its Full Lineup

From big stars to Brony docs, there's something for everyone at 40th edition of the film fest.

Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd rip romantic comedies to shreds in They Came Together, which screens on June 7 as part of SIFF.

The Seattle International Film Festival is always one of the city’s biggest annual cultural parties, and the newly announced SIFF schedule lays out just how SIFF will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2014. With 435 films on the 2014 lineup, including 20 world premiere features, SIFF might be the only festival where one can truly claim there's something for everyone.

As previously announced, the festival kicks off on May 15 with the Jimi Hendrix biopic Jimi: All Is By My Side. That film is bookended by the Closing Gala feature The One I Love, a romantic drama with surreal Twilight Zone-esque undertones that stars Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss. SIFF 2014's Centerpiece Gala is Richard Linklater's Boyhood, a film shot over 12 years so that the actors could age naturally. Some of the other feature highlights include the local premiere of Seattle director Megan Griffiths's Lucky Them, early screenings of this summer's animated sure-to-be-a-hit sequel How to Train Your Dragon 2, and They Came Together, a romantic comedy starring Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler that unrelentingly mocks romantic comedy tropes.

SIFF will host tributes for Laura Dern and Chiwetel Ejiofor, with each actor being on hand for a screening of one of their beloved films and a new feature. Dern's films will be Wild at Heart and The Fault in Our Stars, while Ejiofor presents Serenity and Half of a Yellow Sun. Music legend Quincy Jones will also be honored with SIFF's Lifetime Achievement Award during a screening of the jazz documentary Keep on Keepin' On.

To celebrate the 40th Anniversary, SIFF hosts three hits from prior festivals: The Stunt Man, The Whole Wide World, and a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Speaking of the midnight, the popular "Midnight Adrenaline" series returns to the Egyptian Theatre (which reopens for SIFF for the first time since its closure last June) and features the schlocky goodness fans have come to expect: Sasquatch hunters (Willow Creek), elderly werewolves (Late Phases), witches (Witching and Bitching), and Zombeavers (which is exactly what it sounds like).

The documentary lineup looks robust (60 total films) and diverse. The offerings include the world premiere of Razing the Bar, which looks back at Seattle's now-defunct punk rock bar the Funhouse, a peak into the world of Bronies (the obsessive adult male fans of the My Little Pony cartoon) in A Brony Tale, and the Nick Cave doc 20,000 Days on Earth. For a full scheule of all SIFF's films, check out siff.net.